Justice League Reshoots May Cost $25 Million Due to Schedule Conflicts

The reshoots on the Justice League are proving costly, in no small part because of scheduling conflicts. Warner Bros.’ DC Extended Universe is following a template established years ago by Marvel with its Avengers film: putting all of its superhero characters together in one film, in the midst of the individual solo character movies. Sure, DCEU is doing that in a different order, but Justice League will bring together Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and various others this November.

The Justice League film’s production has been somewhat tumultuous, even before director Zack Snyder stepped aside from the movie, following the death of his daughter, and was replaced in the director’s chair by Avengers director Joss Whedon. Reshoots are underway on Justice League – and according to a new report, it’s been something of a logistical nightmare.

According to a report in Variety, the reshoots for Justice League have dragged on for two months, at an extra cost of $25 million. A big reason for the difficulty, according to the piece, has been the busy schedules of many of the actors, who are in-demand and not so easily able to extend their time on the Justice League shoot by additional months. The reshoots have focused on “punching up” the dialogue of the film (with THR‘s sources describing them as “substantial”).

The reshoots, at least so far, have interfered with upcoming projects for Ezra Miller (The Flash), who is returning in the now-in-production Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them sequel. Meanwhile, Henry Cavill has been jumping back and forth between Justice League and the currently-filming Mission: Impossible 6, resulting in his mustache for the latter needing to be digitally-removed from his reshoot scenes for Justice League (since Cavill is not contractually allowed to shave it off). Variety also reports that Whedon is unlikely to be credited as director or co-director on Justice League, but will probably receive a producing or writing credit.

Are the reshoots cause for concern? Possibly. A film like Justice League represents a pretty major undertaking, especially with that large a cast and characters who mean a great deal to a lot of people – and that’s even before consideration of replacing the director at such a late date (admittedly, due to unforeseen and tragic reasons).

Then again, plenty of hugely successful movies have had tumultuous production histories – and after all, taking two months to fix what’s wrong is probably better than not fixing what’s wrong. Besides, the DCEU is riding a winning streak after the success of Wonder Woman – and if the Twitter reaction to Comic-Con is any indication, that’s a whole lot of fan anticipation for the Justice League film.